NTU EEE's Class of 2017 : Ng Wei Jie

NTU_PageContent

Mr Ng Wei Jie is graduating with NTU EEE’s Class of 2017, achieving a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic Engineering) with first class honours. He is a multiple award winner for the upcoming NTU Convocation for the following: IEEE Power Engineering Chapter (Singapore) Gold Medal cum Book Prize; Professional Engineers Board Gold Medal; and SP Group Book Prize award.

What is your favourite university activity? Throughout my four years in NTU, I have participated twice in the overseas community involvement project (OCIP). I guess I would say those are my best memories in university as I love meeting new friends, experiencing different cultures and doing volunteering work. Being able to contribute my little bit to less privileged communities; I got to learn a lot from them. I started to appreciate all the little things. These experiences not only instilled a sense of empathy and compassion in the bottom of my heart but also exposed me to the “truer” world. Indeed, it shaped and broadened my view of the world.

What are some experiences you had as a NTU EEE student?
That would be the project-based module, EEE Design and Innovation Project (DIP), which every NTU EEE undergraduate has to go through. Frankly speaking, I dislike doing projects just like most students. However, this DIP was quite a fun experience for me. I met some good teammates who I was not acquainted with beforehand. We started off without having any direction. Throughout the whole semester, we strove hard, asking PhD students for their help, googling, encountering trials and errors. In the end, we just managed to build our prototype. Just when we thought everything was finally coming to an end, on the day of our final demo and presentation, our prototype failed to function due to some unknown technical reason. This was a total shock to us. Unfortunately, we could not fix the problem in time. However, the “mountain road twists around each new peak”. My group went on to be awarded the Best Demo for the power electrical category. This was totally unexpected. Not only the experiences, but also the friendship forged and memories created were fully appreciated. In a nutshell, this is one of the more challenging modules that I have taken in NTU EEE, yet it was truly interesting and rewarding.

What do you like about NTU EEE? The tagline of NTU EEE while I was an undergrad, “One Degree, Many Opportunities”. This sounds ambitious but it is so true since we are living in a world where using technology is inevitable. One thing that I like about this big NTU EEE family is that you will never be short of opportunities and platforms to develop and demonstrate your skills. Most of the lecturers and teaching assistants are friendly and helpful. They are always willing to listen and give advice which I feel is quite important and useful not only in terms of academic but also in our future career. Being in university is just like belonging to a mini society. You get to meet different people and experience new things. For me, NTU EEE is an excellent place where you can expose yourself to numerous activities ranging from holding school club events, academic researches to projects. Throughout the four years of my life in NTU EEE, I can say that I’m immensely proud to be part of this family!

What are some of your achievements while being a NTU EEE undergraduate?I had attained the EEE/IEM Excellence Award 2017. I was also part of the Ecoventure 2016 team which was awarded the Nanyang Award for Humanitarian Work 2017.

What are your plans after graduating?I have just started my first job as an executive engineer in SMRT since July 2017. I find it an interesting and challenging job. Whether it be soft or hard skills, there are still a lot of things for me to learn and enhance on as I grow along my career pathway. I would say learning doesn’t end on the day you submit your Final Year Project (FYP) report. In fact, you will get more motivated and inspired to learn as you land a job that you love. Also, the knowledge acquired from a degree is barely sufficient to survive in the competitive workforce nowadays. Within the next few years, I hope to equip myself with as many “bullets and guns” as possible that will prepare me to be a Professional Engineer (PE)!

What do you have to say to current and future undergrads?
Study hard, then only play hard! If I were given a chance to re-live my university life, I would have “played” more. However, you also do not want to throw your school fees to the wind. So...do remember to complete your weekly tutorials, lecture recordings, and past year papers. Study as much as possible, and explore as many areas as you can to understand which area suits you the best. With all the opportunities and platforms in NTU EEE, I got to choose the areas which I had inclinations toward; and grew along the way. I am really glad to have studied at NTU EEE, which has definitely motivated and prepared me to be a well-rounded engineer throughout my years of study.